Saturday, December 23, 2017

The Stable in Our Heart

Christmas in Connecticut is one of my favorite Christmas
movies. It stars Miss Barbara Stanwyck, who’d I watch read the phone book if it
were filmed. She stars as a magazine food writer Elizabeth Lane.

She fills
her articles with recipes of the amazing food she grows and cooks on her
Connecticut farm, asides of the antics of her adorable baby, and loving
references to her husband. She’s basically that person on Facebook, except the
movie takes place in the 1940’s and no one could read how amazing her 25 layer
cake made with flour she milled herself while teaching her 18 month old how to
speak Chinese as her spouse finished adding a quaint but perfectly
decorated guest house to their back acreage while we stand in line at Kroger’s
on Christmas Eve hoping no one will notice the mashed potatoes we serve
tomorrow come from a box.

Except
there’s a twist.

Because there’s always a twist.

Elizabeth Lane is single, lives in New
York, and the closest she comes to cooking is opening the menu at her favorite
restaurant.

Through
some twists and turns, Elizabeth tries to live up to the image she’s created
for the world to see one Christmas in Connecticut and it, as it always does,
all comes crashing down.

One reason
I love this movie is that, without really ever mentioning a deeply true meaning
of Christmas, it tells that story. Many of us rush around to find the perfect
gifts, decorate our homes with the latest ideas in holiday décor, and strive
for whatever image we have in our hearts and minds Christmas should be. We want
to write the Facebook post, Christmas letter, or story that is merry and
bright.

But the
dark streets of life are ever present. The perfect gift can’t make up for the
strained relationships we might have. While decorating the tree we hold an
ornament that was the favorite of a loved one who died, and the grief rushes up
on us. The feasts and parties can’t fill our souls, often weary from the
ever-present discord we hear in the state of our nation and the world.

As much as
we want to write a story of perfection, the true words of humanity and life
twist and turn in us, shifting us off balance, making us wonder exactly what is so merry about this season.

Just as a
young couple wondered over 2000 years ago. Two Jewish people living in an
empire ruled by Rome, who at best tolerated this sect of people who had the
audacity to worship a god they called the One, True God, who promised to send a
savior, Emmanuel, God with us, to ransom a people captive in unrest and
discord.

In keeping
Christ in Christmas, we are called not so much to worry about what the local
salesperson says to us as we hand over money, but more that we remember Jesus
was not born all those eons ago into a world that suddenly stopped all its
wrongs and said, “Wow, you’re here. Now we can get our act together.”

God
doesn’t come into a perfect world. God comes into our world, messy and
disorganized at best, scary and intimidating at its worst. God comes to us,
just as we are – not the we that posts the filtered picture on Instagram that
makes us look amazing or the we that seems all together, but the we that is
simply where we are.

As we celebrate the birth of Christ, may we meet him as we are, in our honest joy and even our honest pain. The world may want the false idol of perfection. We may be tempted to embrace picture, too, thinking we have to pretend to be merry and bright to come to the manger. After all, image is everything.

But not for God. God's love that was birthed into creation eons ago continues to find a way to be born into our lives through honesty and even doubtful faith.

In fact, perhaps in our meekness, our vulnerability, and even in our fearfulness, that is when Christ truly can be born into our hearts.

Into the
Darkest Hour

by Madeleine L’Engle

It was a
time like this,
War & tumult of war,
a horror in the air.

Hungry yawned the abyss —and yet there came the
star
and the child most wonderfully there.

It was
time like this
of fear & lust for power,
license & greed and blight —and yet the Prince of
blisscame into the darkest
hourin quiet & silent
light.

And in a
time like this
how celebrate his birth
when all things fall apart?

Ah! wonderful it is
with no room on the earth
the stable is our heart.

Also one of my favorite Christmas oldies - Barbara was a brilliant actress. Especially during the holidays, I struggle to make everything perfect, to be perfect, all the while knowing I will fall on my face in disappointment each time. So often it is hard to apply the knowledge that God loves me as I am, where I am, to accept it, REALLY believe it. Why would He when I'm such a hot mess? (Are all women their own worst enemy?) My desperate prayer for the new year is to allow Christ's love to sink in father than my head knowledge and faith's belief to actual application and a wee bit of understanding it, because I don't really get it most days - kind of blows my mind.